Here you will find a beautiful nature garden and a statue is erected to his memory.

Pallas is located north-east of Athlone in County Westmeath, straddling the Longford/Westmeath border and is today traversed by the N55.

This whole area is the Goldsmith Country, the land forever immortalized by the writings of Oliver Goldsmith.

Born at Pallas, County Longford in 1728, Goldsmith was brought up from an early age at Lissoy Parsonage, County Westmeath.

His writings reflect the area.

The Deserted Village poem is about Glasson in County Westmeath His comedy-play She Stoops to Conquer was based on a classic case of mistaken identity at Ardagh House in County Longford, while his novel The Vicar of Wakefield is one of the most acclaimed works of the English language.

Goldsmith also published histories of England, Greece and Rome, biographies of Lord Bollingbroke and Thomas Parnell and, somewhat more unusually, penned an eight volume History of the Earth and Animated Nature.

Even after moving to London, Goldsmith still yearned for the Arcadian days of his youth.

He wrote to a friend in 1757 and poignantly declared I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lissoy gate and there take in the, to me, most pleasing horizon in nature.

He died in 1774 and was buried in the Poets Corner of Westminister Abbey.

A memorial window to the poets father, the Reverend Charles Goldsmith, can still be seen at Forgney Church, near Pallas in County Longford.

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